IV Congreso Internacional CULT

Universidad de Alicante

The exploitation of the COMETVAL corpus of tourism genres from interpersonal discourse and

its application to translation

FRANCISCA SUAU JIMÉNEZ

Universitat de València

COMETVAL research group, IULMA, University of Valencia

This work is based on the research project Ref. FFI2011-24712 funded by the Ministerio de Economía

y Competitividad, Spanish Government.

Preliminaries: translation and corpora

The use of language corpora before and after the production of translations can reduce the amount of

difficulties and provides ways of expressing and therefore consulting specific meanings and functions

(Tognini-Bonelli 2001,Teich 2003, Varantola 2003).

It is common practice for translators to rely on so-called “parallel texts”, i.e. on

comparable corpora of texts in the source and target language, matched by genre and subject matter (Bernardini 2006).

The training of new professionals in translation through corpora…

demands compilation and exploitation of ad hoc corpora

(general or specialized)…

these corpora allow

• handling of examples of real language use

• rich varieties of language patterns

• in at least two languages

Corpora offer to translators

collocational information

information on words’ natural occurrences

conceptual information

terminological information

concordances

etc….

As for transmission to learners…

• via research (our case)

• via learners actually manipulating them

corpora with learning purposes

for translation can be exploited

in two ways:

“Regularities of translation and of languages can only be unearthed through the repeated observation of

empirical data and increasingly refined descriptions […]”. (Zanettin 2014: 194)

Implications for translators and translators to be…

through corpora exploitation via

mastery of lexis and discourse structures

translation trainees will acquire

better competences for achieving quality translations (Nord 1997, Durán Muñoz 2011, Suau

Jiménez 2015-in press)

Specialized corpus design

If a corpus and its sub-corpora are to be

exploited for research purposes, they must be….

proportional to the relative frequency of the genres in the textual universe to be sampled, that is to say a

corpus should be “balanced” (McEnery et al. 2008: 18).

Which corpus is better, parallel or comparable?

Parallel Corpora : same text in two languages. Not always easy to find, unless translated. If found and compiled, permits word to word

examination....

Comparable Corpora : same genre and discipline in two original languages. Different texts, allows comparison between same rhetorical functions

and same concepts...

In our case, we have used comparable corpora due to the nature of the discipline (tourism) and

the genres compiled (hotel websites, touristic guides)

This paper…

addresses exploitation of comparable corpora for

translation via research

exploring interpersonal metadiscursive strategies in two original languages….

corpus (COMETVAL),

phase 1 (7m words)

COMETVAL corpus characteristics

Specialized corpus in tourism

Multilingual: English, Spanish, French

Genres: hotel websites, touristic guides, traveller forums

Size: 7 millions words so far

Comparable corpus

Parallel (translated) sub-corpus of hotel websites only in some Spanish hotels

Sub-corpus object of this study:

hotel websites in English and Spanish (2m words)

Results of the first COMETVAL project (2011-2014) applied to translation

Online Multilingual Dictionary of Tourism:

http://tourismdictio.uv.es/

Research papers and talks on interpersonality applied to translation of tourism genres, in:

https://uv.academia.edu/FSuau

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Francisca_Suau-Jimenez

2015 (in press).Traducción de calidad de webs hoteleras: discurso interpersonal e implicación del cliente.

2014. La traducción estratégica de páginas web de hoteles: un elemento necesario para la persuasión del cliente.

2014. The importance of interpersonal discourse to provide quality translations.

Our research is based on the concept of «quality translation»

Quality translation can be defined as

adequate (Nord 1997; Durán Muñoz 2012), i.e. appropriate to its communicative purpose

functional and pragmatic (Nobs 2003), i.e. adjusted to the client’s requirements, but also to the cultural and stylistic features of the target language

therefore, a quality translation needs has to achieve the genre’s goal and to be adapted to the target culture; these difficulties can only be solved by corpora with real examples of usage….

Interpersonal metadiscourse, quality translation and pragmatic adequacy (Suau Jiménez 2015)

certain domains and genres (tourism) have a strong interpersonal function:

an explicit or implicit dialogue between author and reader that follows a pre-established

purpose (persuasion in tourism)

hotel websites are one of them…..

therefore, a quality translation of a hotel website requires interpersonal discourse to be

taken into account

Interpersonal metadiscourse or interpersonality: markers and strategies

interpersonality: lexico-grammatical items belonging to the author’s or reader’s voice, that help achieving the genre’s

communicative purpose

each language has certain interpersonal markers or strategies influenced by culture,

field and genre

that need to be translated adequately

to carry out quality translations, trainees need…

to know interpersonal

patterns according to

the language the genre the field

to know the markers’ usage

with frequencies

(percentages)

with examples

Interpersonal markers for tourism (Spanish)

INTERPERSONAL PATTERN FOR INTERNET TOURISM GENRES OF PROMOTION (Mapelli 2008; Pierini 2009; Suau Jiménez 2012)

AUTHOR’S VOICE

READER’S VOICE

Boosters (78 %) Hedges (7%) Self-mentions (7%) Attitude markers (1%)

Directives (3%) Reader’s markers (3%)

Real examples of interpersonal markers and strategies (COMETVAL corpus)

Booster/realzador:

(…fantásticas posibilidades/ vida nocturna rutilante / amplísima oferta cultural…)

Self-mention/auto-mención:

(Nuestro hotel para toda la familia se encuentra muy cerca de las principales atracciones históricas …)

Directives/directivos:

Llámenos a cualquier hora al teléfono...

Descanse junto al Támesis.

Different ways to focus interpersonal communication for persuasion in English and Spanish – hotel websites

Spanish: impersonality, boosting the product and distance with the reader

«Entre sus magníficas instalaciones, el Hotel cuenta con spa, un gimnasio para nuestros clientes y un espectacular Centro de Convenciones. Además, todas las habitaciones son confortables, luminosas y exteriores.»

http://www.melia.com/es/hoteles/espana/valencia/melia-valencia/index.html

English: strong reader’s engagement and boosting the product

“Metropolitan by COMO is a landmark address. Our restaurants immerse you in London’s energy, whether you are enjoying the Met Bar’s music or the precision of Nobu’s Japanese-Peruvian menu.”

http://www.comohotels.com/metropolitanlondon/

How have we proceeded to exploit our corpus for translation purposes?

0. Software tool: AntConc 3.4.3

1. Keyword List in English: matching keywords with those of interpersonal metadiscourse pattern for tourism (Suau Jiménez & Dolón Herrero 2007)

2. Selected interpersonal keywords (markers) are used to find concordance strings

3. Interpersonal categories and strategies are identified (Hyland & Tse 2004; Hyland 2008)

4. Same operation with Spanish

What have we obtained? 2 sets or batteries of examples of interpersonal

metadiscursive strategies in context

2 patterns of interpersonal markers and categories in English and Spanish in the domain of tourism and the genres of hotel website and touristic guide

markers and strategies that help accomplish persuasion

divided into author’s voice and reader’s voice

ready to be used as references for translators

How and when are these results being actually used for the training of translators?

at the University of Valencia

with students of the degree of Translation and Interpretation

in the subject of Specialized Translation

and when they carry out their PFG (Proyecto de Fin de Grado)

Conclusions. We have….

designed and compiled a specialized comparable corpus of tourism through several

internet genres

analysed Spanish and English interpersonal metadiscursive strategies and markers

drawn interpersonal patterns for each genre and language, with frequencies of usage

exploited them producing two batteries of examples in context that can work as references for translators

Thanks for your attention and interest!!!!!!!!!

francisca.suau@uv.es

IULMA

Universitat de València